


Diplomatic Accord

by hobbitdragon



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aliens, Cultural Differences, Egg Laying, First Time, Fisting, Frottage, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Neo Pronouns, Other, Romance, Science Fiction, Size Difference, Tentacles, Xenophilia, despite the tags this story is very Soft, the alien in this story is basically a big ole dragon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:34:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23406853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitdragon/pseuds/hobbitdragon
Summary: Kiera was supposed to be part of an entire team of human archaeologists sent down to one of the most important dig sites in recent history. But due to a diplomatic problem, she ends up being sent alone to the planet's surface - well, alone except for her massive alien colleague, Teekay.
Relationships: Female Archaeologist/Alien Archaeologist Coworker
Comments: 36
Kudos: 115





	Diplomatic Accord

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lowbudgetcyborg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowbudgetcyborg/gifts).



> OH MY GOD THIS IS FINALLY DONE. I've had this hanging over me for almost a year and a half now. This is, technically, for [Marvel Trumps Hate 2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/MTH2018). But it's both grossly late (it was due November 2019) and clearly not about a Marvel Property. My sweet, lovely commissioner has been endlessly patient with my struggles with this. Apparently my brain's idiosyncrasies plus being paid for my writing is a very bad combination, which I didn't know till I accepted two fic commissions. (Whoops! Now I know.) But anyway, my sweet commissioner tolerated me not only taking forever with this, but having to renegotiate for what they'd receive when my brain simply _could not_ produce anything for the first prompt. 
> 
> CONTENT WARNINGS: this fic contains brief mentions of a culture in which reproductive coercion takes place. None of that happens onscreen, but one character is briefly scared it will happen, and it is mentioned a few times. 
> 
> Also, this fic is about what basically is a nonbinary alien. I know cis authors writing nonhuman characters as nonbinary instead of ever writing nonbinary humans is a really shitty trope by now, but I'm not cis and I love aliens, so here we are. Please mind your own needs in reading this.

The Federation of Human Planets had sent Kiera with her whole team of archaeologists, because of course they did. Belvedere-5’s Portolian ruins were among the biggest yet discovered, spanning more than five square kilometers on the surface and who knew how far below that. So of course Kiera had a team! One person alone couldn’t hope to even begin to catalog the surface ruins, much less anything else. 

But the United Empire of Tok had only sent Teekay, because more than one Vegrag sent anywhere outside the United Empire was considered a hostile incursion. And then the United Empire’s nearby embassy had thrown a fit, because if  _ they _ were only allowed to have one archaeologist exploring the ruins and thus reaping the benefits of whatever was discovered there, then why should  _ humans _ be allowed a team of fifty? Cries of unfairness and bad sportsmanship were immediately leveled. 

It had almost escalated into a declaration of war (because when  _ didn’t _ it when the United Empire was involved) when the orders had come through from Federation Command: Kiera was to proceed by herself into the ruins, pending further negotiation with the United Empire. The Federation thought it was better that even one human be allowed into the ruins rather than none. They didn’t want the Empire getting a head start on whatever turned up. 

So Kiera had sighed, rearranged her selection of tools to account for not having an entire team of specialists at her disposal, said a regretful goodbye to her disappointed colleagues, loaded the new kit onto her hover cart, and thanked fuck that she’d always been a bit of a loner anyway. 

She would have Teekay for company, of course; part of the immediate armistice required that neither of them venture into the ruins without the other. But, well. Kiera wasn’t  _ so _ much of a loner that she wanted to be isolated for an unknown length of time without a single other human for companionship. It might only take a few days to get the politics sorted out, or it might take years. 

The human survey team which had initially discovered the site a few weeks ago had installed the multi-species telepad and the multiform-weblink, as was SOP. So when Kiera materialized on Belvedere-5’s surface, there was Teekay, waiting for her. 

Kiera was admittedly not the best at reading Vegrag body language, but she knew enough to understand that Teekay was very, very unhappy. Ze looked like a cat standing in a puddle, spine arched high above zir six legs and long tail tensed into a very expressive upwards curl to match. All six feet with their massive talons were crunched up near to each other, too, so zir body almost formed a cursive M in three big humps of spine. Zir chin was tucked down against zir neck and the four front-facing eyes were all narrowed in distress. 

And, of course, there was the very obvious black and blue speckled pattern spanning the massive length of zir sides. Kiera had no idea what the rest of the skin patterns and colors meant. But she knew that colors swept along the sides like that expressed emotion in a way very few Vegrag could consciously control. Blue-black speckles meant a miserable Vegrag.

With Teekay’s body in that particular posture, the highest point of zir belly curved a good six meters above Kiera’s head. Her eyes were barely level with Teekay’s elbows. 

As soon as Teekay saw her, however, zir back, belly, and face immediately started to flash colors, and a flush of pale green relief bled into the blue and black. 

The Vegrag translator Kiera wore in a little headset that fitted over her ears lagged several seconds behind in translating, but when it spoke, it had a nice deep voice. The United Empire’s diplomatic corps had come through on this, at least; the translated voice was high-quality enough to sound human and expressive rather than robotic and monotone. 

“I am grateful to the structure of the universe that you are here! I thought they might snatch me back. I was just waiting for the command to come through, and that would have been the greatest disappointment imaginable. This is already the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me, I am so sorry I could--” then came the little tone that meant the following translation was inexact, “--weep. No one could possibly make a worse first impression than I am now!” 

Kiera understood why ‘weep’ wasn’t a good translation; Vegrag were not physically capable of crying. Which probably meant the original communication had referenced some Vegrag physiological response humans didn’t have. The tech for human-to-Vegrag translation was a work in progress. 

But Kiera couldn’t help but feel rather charmed by this massive, anxious creature, despite what Teekay clearly thought. “It’s not your fault,” Kiera replied with a smile when the patterns stopped shifting, easing her grip on the reins to her hover cart. “I’m Kiera, by the way. Kiera Suresh.”

Teekay’s four front eyes scanned all over Kiera’s face and body as she spoke. The little translator unit Teekay held in zir spine tendrils lit up with images as Kiera spoke, translating her words into the Vegrag visual language. Teekay’s feet shuffled away from each other, lowering the highest humps of zir spine. 

Teekay flashed a response a moment later, and even before the translator started talking it wasn’t hard to intuit how the human version of zir name had happened. There was a pattern of blue-green blotches across Teekay’s neck where it met zir thorax that, if one squinted, looked a little like a calligraphic T and K. Vegrag names were sometimes translated that way if no better translation could be made. Sometimes they just got translated as things like “Blue-Grey Fractal” or “Purple Diamond.” It had caused diplomatic incidents on more than one occasion, where humans had come up with a verbal version of a name that missed some vital color or pattern that occurred elsewhere on the body. 

“I’m Teekay, spawn of Green Rose, spawn of Pink S With White Spots. I’m so glad they let you come. I was terrified--” A little smattering of yellow showed up along zir sides to reiterate this, Teekay apparently feeling some of that anxiety again just thinking about it, “that they wouldn’t let anyone down here at all. Just think of all these beautiful ruins waiting down here with nobody allowed to look at them. That would objectively be the worst!”

Kiera smiled. It was far too soon to judge, but Teekay seemed…sweet. Not what Kiera had expected of her mandatory Vegrag coworker. 

“Well, here we both are. I’m interested to see what kinds of tools Vegrag archaeologists use. Will you show me once I have my living quarters set up?”

She waited the several seconds lag time as Teekay’s translator picked up her words.

“Of course, I’d be delighted!”

**

The rest of the evening went pretty well, all things considered. ‘Evening’ was a relative term on Belvedere-5, given that the days here lasted a full Earth month. But it was close to Kiera’s bedtime when she finished first setting up her tent and then showing Teekay all her tools and having Teekay’s explained to her. Being this close to the ruins excited both of them, their eyes repeatedly drawn to the half-tumbled buildings. 

The pace of their conversations felt...nice. Almost restful, even if Teekay zirself already seemed to be anything but. They talked as they each set up their camps at the edge of the ruins. They didn’t yet know one another well enough to talk over each other, and both of them had to wait for their individual translators to kick in. Already Kiera recognized the Vegrag pattern for “Portolian,” a spiky purple ring on a grey background smack in the middle of the neck. She suspected Teekay recognized the mouth movements for the word too. 

One of the conditions for both of them being allowed to be here was that they had to notify one another when they were removing their translators. Kiera considered leaving the earbuds in for the night, but then realized her ears would not thank her for doing so. So with a little regret she notified Teekay, whose sides rippled up a speckling of yellow anxiety at the idea that they wouldn’t be able to communicate for a whole eight hours. 

Vegrag didn’t need rest nearly as often as humans. Once every human week, if that, and a well-fed Vegrag could easily last a month without resting. It was part of what had allowed their extensive conquests, especially when compared to species like the Waiweii, who were smaller than humans and needed dormancy every four hours. 

But right now, human requirements for rest plus diplomatic compromises meant that Teekay wasn’t allowed to explore the ruins by zirself, and had to stay within twenty meters of Kiera at all times. As Kiera closed the flap of her self-erecting tent, she saw Teekay settle into a curvaceous pile like a snake, interrupted only by the sharp points of zir knees and elbows. It seemed likely that ze would read or something while Kiera slept. 

**

When Kiera asked about it the next morning (for a relative value of morning) Teekay did the Vegrag equivalent of blushing. Ze turned a charming yellowy-orange along zir sides, and then admitted that ze had spent the night watching Vegrag operas. 

“Oh! I didn’t know you were a fan,” Kiera said. But then, of course Teekay would be. What little Kiera know of zir personality made zir seem like exactly the sort of person who’d watch V-opera. 

Vegrag operas were infamous throughout the galaxies for their combination of visual beauty, complex choreography, and campy over-the-top emotionality, especially in the romances and tragedies. Human scholarship on the subject was often varying levels of offensive to the Vegrag, so Kiera had ignored most of it. But while Kiera herself was no expert, she had watched enough to find them enjoyable and to understand some of the conventions of the art form. 

They got to work that day with Teekay rambling cheerfully about zir favorite operas. Kiera, in an effort both to be polite and to get to know her fellow archaeologist better, asked Teekay about zir favorites as they got back to work. 

Portolian architecture was, to say the least, organic in form, as all of it had been originally either eaten away or excreted by the Portolians themselves. They had, during the millennia they’d been alive, ingested various forms of rocks and minerals and either regurgitated them to form certain parts of the architecture or excreted them from the other end to form others. It was a well-documented fact that Portolians with beautiful teeth and especially potent digestive glands had been highly-prized as architects, as the dental traces their diamond-tipped teeth left on their work would last for however long the rock lasted. Several accounts had been discovered of Portolian master architects discovering and falling in love with ‘younglings with lovely fangs and curvaceous glands,’ and either committing suicide if these perfect beauties refused to become their apprentices or rejoicing for decades if they gained the desired individual as a student. Kiera herself wondered how dramatized these accounts were, but it made for interesting work regardless. 

The site she and Teekay were working on had clearly been the century-long labor of a whole collective of pretty-toothed Portolians. While some of it had crumbled due to asteroids and sandstorms, the strength of Portolian architecture had mostly withstood the test of time. 

Watching Teekay slither, wriggle, and scrabble zir way into the smallish rooms also amused Kiera a great deal, but it would have been rude to laugh. Kiera hid her smiles as much as possible. But she couldn’t help biting her lip a bit at the way Teekay had to spread zirself over multiple rooms, or could only get zir front segment into a space to scan and document it with zir tools. 

It helped that Teekay was a phenomenal scholar. Ze had encyclopedic knowledge of every bit of scholarship available on the subject of Portolian society, seemingly regardless of the scholar’s academic credentials or species. 

Discussing their favorite conspiracy theories about the fall of the Portolian empire and comparing notes on their interpretations of Portolian texts kept them occupied for weeks of work side by side as the United Empire dragged its feet and refused to budge on allowing the rest of Kiera’s team to come down. As the time passed, Kiera felt more and more guilty for her teammates but also less and less distressed by having to share cramped quarters and constant company with Teekay. 

When confronted with a species of this size, with massive claws and needle-sharp teeth, it should have been difficult to forget that they were infamous as the conquerors of an entire galaxy. But Teekay mostly used zir claws to delicately pick at and extract the artefacts they found half-buried in dust, or to skewer little morsels of food and feed zirself genteelly as ze watched zir favorite operas in the evenings. Kiera found it easy to relax around zir. 

One such evening, after a long day of laboring over a particular translation together, Kiera retreated to her tent for the night. She’d gotten her period the day before, so even though they hadn’t moved around much doing the translating, she was exhausted. All her limbs ached around the bones and her cramps were going full-force. 

Lying down in her bed was sweet relief, and for several minutes she just lay there breathing, feeling like a collapsing soufflé as she relaxed into the mattress. At least, she thought to herself, she probably only had another five years of this before her body gave it up. She’d turned forty-five just before arriving on Belvedere-5. 

With her environmental suit off (Belvedere-5 had a rich atmosphere which was perfectly breathable to Vegrag and not at all breathable to humans) Kiera felt strangely naked. The suits were designed to be light and comfortable, with the most advanced nano-tech oxygen bubble available for her head and neck. But after wearing a suit day after day, suddenly having her skin bared to the air felt almost illicit. Just having it off sent a contrary little surge of arousal through her.

It probably didn’t help that she was on her period. She was always horniest then. 

With a private little smile, she decided to try one of her oldest and favorite cures for cramps. She pulled her pillow out from under her head and wedged it up between her thighs, then turned over onto her belly. It took a little more yanking at the pillow to get it positioned just right to rock against. 

For a few minutes her mind wandered aimlessly between memories and fantasies before settling yet again on the object of most of her recent masturbatory fantasies: Teekay. 

Perhaps a different person would have been able to spend this much time side by side with someone as charming as Teekay without developing a bit of a crush. But Kiera wasn’t that person. She wasn’t sure how to tell if a Vegrag was flirting, because the social cues were so different. Having watched V-operas gave her some concept of the mechanics of Vegrag romance (protracted but intense, and apparently common among squad-mates in the military) but opera wasn’t the same as real life. And romance wasn’t the same as sex. 

What Kiera wanted right now was sex. 

As she worked her hips, she pictured rubbing herself off on the great, terrible curves of Teekay’s claws. She imagined Teekay holding carefully still for her, watching her with interest as she chased her pleasure. 

Kiera switched to another image when the charge of the first one dimmed. This time Kiera imagined Teekay much smaller, so small that ze could fit into the palm of her hand. She pictured Teekay squirming sinuously between her legs, rubbing between her lips and across her opening. 

She imagined Teekay zir normal huge size, using the tendrils around zir face and neck to stroke inside of Kiera. She had a tampon in right now, the only kind of menstrual product that was convenient for her out in the field, but the vividness of the image made that not matter. Each of those tendrils was the length of her legs and the thickness of her arms and they looked so soft, like the arms of an anemone. 

She came to that mental image, Teekay using zir tendrils to fuck Kiera while flashing an embarrassed orange speckled with delighted deep purple. 

The thought had her warm and smiling as she drifted off to sleep. 

**

Two ‘mornings’ later, when Kiera had finished washing herself and was ready to start the day of excavation, Teekay was nowhere to be found. 

The hairs stood up on the back of Kiera’s neck. She became keenly, horribly aware of the emergency call button on her suit, which would summon either armed forces or a medical team if she needed it. The panic button had become SOP in teams working with Vegrag members after far more violent incidents than Kiera wanted to remember. Now, with Teekay missing, the horrific newsreels played through her mind whether she wanted them or not. 

But she forced herself not to jump to conclusions. She changed the settings on her translator to broadcast locally rather than just its usual short-range of forty meters, and then called out. 

“Teekay? Where are you? You’re not supposed to leave my side,” Kiera said as gently as she could. 

The usual several seconds of translation lag passed, and then more. Right when Kiera started to sweat under her suit, her translator finally spoke. 

“I’m so sorry,” Teekay said at last. “This wasn’t supposed to happen!”

“What wasn’t supposed to happen?” Kiera asked, trying to keep her voice even. Worst-case scenarios ran through her mind even faster now. What if the United Empire had decided they were fed up with diplomacy and were sending a strike force down to secure the site? The Empire had done worse things before. Maybe they’d notified Teekay while Kiera had been sleeping. 

“I wasn’t due for another year,” Teekay said, and even the translator’s voice sounded upset. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m so sorry.”

“Weren’t due for what?” Kiera asked. 

In the few seconds that followed, while they both waited for their translators to kick in, she realized that she wasn’t totally helpless here. She kept her finger on the panic button, and followed the trail of dusty footprints she could see on the ground now she was looking. She stepped carefully; Vegrag had no organs for hearing, but they were sensitive enough to vibration to be able to feel a human who walked heavily. 

“You haven’t called your diplomatic counsel yet, have you? Please don’t! Please don’t, they’ll tell my handler!” Teekay begged, digital voice now sounding outright panicked. “If they find out, I’ll be sent back to--” the warning tone played for an inexact translation, “--do my civic duty and I don’t want that. I want to stay here with you.”

“I haven’t called anyone or told anyone anything,” Kiera said gently. “What are you afraid of your handler finding out? What’s going on?”

A long pause followed this, much longer than was required for translation. Kiera, still following the footprints, now started seeing splatters of an pearlescent ooze. As the lights of her tech hit it, it glimmered with a rainbowy sheen. 

All at once, an idea about what might be happening sprang into Kiera’s mind. It was supposed to be a secret, but people on missions with Vegrag whispered about it sometimes. She didn’t dare relax yet, in case her theory was wrong, but she couldn’t help but let out a deep breath of relief. 

“Wait--are you about to drop a clutch?” she asked. 

Five seconds passed. “Yes. Please don’t tell anyone,” Teekay pleaded, zir translated voice now sounding very small and frightened. 

At this, Kiera leaned a hand against the wall, closing her eyes as the fear drained out of her. That was probably the wrong response to have, as the iridescent substance she was seeing could kill her almost instantly if it came in contact with any part of her body, or even if she got close enough to breathe it. But this--this was  _ way _ more manageable than a Vegrag death squad headed her way.  _ Also _ potentially a cause for an intergalactic incident, but their diplomatic teams were way more concerned about individuals who  _ weren’t _ on the planet than those who were. 

“I won’t tell anyone, but--do you need any help?” Kiera asked once her heart rate had calmed a little. “Are you in any pain?”

“You want to help me?” Teekay responded, and the translation made zir sound surprised. 

Kiera hastily rethought her words. What if that was considered grossly offensive? Or, even worse, an embarrassing and intrusive offer like asking to watch someone poop? 

“Er, not if you don’t want help, no,” Kiera added, face flushing hot. She couldn’t even fan herself, the oxygen bubble prevented that. “I’m sorry, I don’t know the etiquette for this.”

An agonizingly long, awkward silence followed this. Kiera balled her hands up into fists and kicked at a wall--a wall that had probably once been created by a Portolian with very beautiful teeth. 

“I would like help,” Teekay admitted at last. “You don’t have to, though. I can’t imagine why any human would want to help. It’s going to be awful.”

“Is it? What’s awful about it?” Kiera asked, face somehow even hotter now. She had seen a few anatomical diagrams smuggled out of various conquered worlds, based on autopsies of dead Vegrag. But the United Empire was very protective of anatomical information about their species, so information on things like this was limited. They were much more willing to share aspects of Vegrag culture like V-operas, and even then, the only ones allowed off of the Vegrag home worlds were those approved by the authorities. So really, what Kiera understood about Vegrag reproduction was even more limited than her understanding of Vegrag romance. And that was based on the cultural equivalent of a combination of ballet and anime. It wasn’t a good idea to take that as a faithful representation of real life. 

“I’m going to destroy the eggs,” Teekay told her, sounding miserable. “It’s my right!” Teekay then added, sounding defensive, as though arguing with someone very different from Kiera. “They changed the laws! I don’t have to report to homeworld to give up the eggs!”

The amount of distress even the translator managed to pack into those words momentarily stole Kiera’s breath. 

The fact that she was unmarried and had no children by forty-five clearly upset and disappointed her family, though they had been polite about it. Even so, she still felt guilty pangs about it sometimes. And while she knew better than most the perils of projecting her own experience onto alien species whose social mores were different from her own, she couldn’t help but imagine this as being similar but much, much worse for Teekay. 

All she and most humans really knew about Vegrag was that they were ‘supposed’ to breed as often as possible. That had been an essential part of the Empire’s expansion policy for millennia. The fact that the laws had changed about a century ago when they had at long last brokered an armistice and agreed to stop expanding hadn’t changed attitudes and expectations much at all--or at least, that was what Kiera had heard. 

“I really don’t care what you do with your own eggs,” Kiera said with complete honesty. “But if you don’t want to be alone for this, I’m happy to be with you. Is that okay?”

“Oh,” Teekay said after the requisite pause. “Yes. Having you here would be a relief.”

Kiera took a moment to silently thank whatever requisitions officer had chosen her specific suit-type for this trip. There were various exo-suits available, graded for all sorts of zero-atmo and nonbreathable conditions, but very few graded for high levels of toxicity. This suit had been specifically designed to be resistant to all Vegrag bodily fluids, just in case a ‘diplomatic incident’ resulted in bloodshed. All Vegrag fluids were toxic to humans, and most sentient species except a few of the more unusual extremophiles. 

The Vegrag homeworld hadn’t been any gentler before their expansionism had taken them into space. Apparently their homeworld had once contained predators even more massive than they were, and the way the Vegrag had evolved to defend themselves was by becoming not only clever but unbelievably poisonous. And if anything Kiera had heard about Vegrag breeding was true, then she would  _ need _ every bit of toxin-resistance her suit could offer. 

Helping a Vegrag through laying a clutch was doubtless not what the quartermaster had intended her to use her suit for. But least, Kiera thought to herself with a smile, she had  _ protection _ . 

The first time she had seen the suits for this expedition she had laughed, because they looked so fetishy. They weren’t skin-tight anywhere except the hands, but they were fitted to their wearers’ body-scans, and the polymer they were made of was glossy and slick-looking. The rich purple color of them had been picked to read as ‘contented’ to Vegrag. It made Kiera feel like a sexy plum. 

She had gotten so used to the suit over time that she’d stopped thinking about it for a while, but now she was keenly aware of it all over again. She was supposed to look  _ happy _ to a Vegrag--maybe that would be helpful here?

The faint glimmer of the oxygen bubble in this suit, whose nanotech was designed to flex and stretch without puncturing, did not in any way disguise the iridescence of Teekay’s amniotic juices. 

“I’m going to follow your footsteps to your location, okay?” Kiera said. “I’m fine providing whatever help you need so long as it’s not dangerous for me.”

Privately Kiera wasn’t sure what she could even do. Probably Vegrag didn’t even think of sex or reproduction in the same way humans did. Many sentient species didn’t.

She turned a few more corners, realizing as she did so that Teekay had probably chosen the largest and most beautiful of the ground-floor rooms in which to hide. They had spent weeks cataloging it together. 

When she turned into the massive hall, she found Teekay coiled up into a miserable knot, tail thrashing back and forth and four front eyes staring miserably right at Kiera. One glowing golden egg the size of Kiera’s torso already lay on the ground. Or a  _ part _ of an egg at least--a bite-sized chunk was missing from it. The pale jelly-like substance of it, surrounding the darker embryo in the middle, was clearly too damaged to be viable any longer. 

Teekay looked miserable, all blotchy blue-black spots with anxious yellow streaks. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” she said reflexively, and then berated herself. She wasn’t supposed to talk to her colleague that way. But then, she wasn’t supposed to be helping her colleague birth a clutch of eggs, either, so maybe they had left ‘supposed to’ behind by now. 

She walked cautiously closer to Teekay. The nearer she got, the more she could see the opening of Teekay’s sex. Unlike in Earth species, where reproductive organs were usually located closer to the back end, Vegrag reproductive parts were located in the thorax, right where the lungs would be in an Earth creature. She had several times noted the line of nubbly bumps right where Teekay’s neck met zir torso, but she hadn’t realized that was Teekay’s--well, Teekay’s vulva, basically. Not that ‘vulva’ was an accurate word for it, but Kiera didn’t have a better one. 

“Are you in any pain? Does this process...hurt you?” Kiera asked, since Teekay’s patterns hadn’t changed. Perhaps ze had clammed up, embarrassed the way humans would be over a bodily function they didn’t like sharing. 

Teekay went orange at this. Blushing, basically. 

“I have heard humans are squeamish about reproduction. I don’t want to upset you! That is the only thing which could make all of this worse.” 

Kiera smiled, hoping Teekay knew her body language well enough by now to understand what that meant. “I’m not as squeamish as some. So, are you in any pain? What help do you need? Like I said, I’m willing.”

Teekay looked at the wrecked egg, the tendrils along zir spine drooping with distress. Normally they curled tight when not in use. The ones holding zir translator were still gripping it, but the rest of them hung limp and unhappy. 

“In the--” the warning tone for an inexact translation played again, “--egg centers, there are workers there to help stimulate the process so it goes easier and feels better. This is my first clutch, so my--” the tone again, “--cloaca wasn’t ready to allow it out. I tried to stimulate myself using my hands, but my claws are too sharp. When I tried my tail, it was better, but I don’t have much fine movement in it. Then I tried my tongue, but it tastes horrible. And my tendrils aren’t long enough.”

A hot wave of some feeling went through Kiera at this. She couldn’t tell if it was arousal or embarrassment or some awful mixture of both. 

“Tell me what you need?” she asked, figuring that was safest and least revealing about her own response to this. She didn’t want to let on that she in no way minded doing this for Teekay. “What would a worker in the, uh, the  _ egg centers _ be doing to help you?”

A little shiver went through Teekay, and zir vulva or cloaca or whatever it was bulged over the intrusion of what was probably another egg. But only the smallest slit of it actually opened up. Kiera wondered if there were muscles holding it closed like a human anus. 

“I don’t know!” Teekay whined. “This is my first clutch. I never wanted hatchlings. I have a friend on the homeworld I was going to ask to help me when this happened, but I wasn’t expecting to lay for another decade!”

Great, Kiera thought to herself. So she had a virginal Vegrag who didn’t know what ze was doing any better than Kiera herself did. 

Well, she’d probably had worse sexual encounters in her life. At least she liked Teekay. 

“Okay,” she said, mostly to herself. “Well, let’s experiment a little and find out what you like, then. May I touch you?”

“Please,” Teekay said, the pattern of zir response blotching up across the skin right above the opening. The anxious yellow along zir sides only intensified, but the unhappy blue-black was giving way to more and more orange. 

Kiera moved right up to zir and laid a hand that shook only a little on the bottom lip of the opening. She and Teekay often worked in close quarters, but never like this. The opening to Teekay’s sex was warm, slippery with the pearlescent fluids. At Kiera’s touch, another blurt of fluids came out, running down Teekay’s chest and pooling on the ground below. For a moment Kiera tried to crane her neck up to look at Teekay’s face, trying to get a read on zir expression, but then she remembered Teekay wasn’t human. It should have been obvious, yet in this moment, right at the start of a new intimacy, old habits apparently died hard. Kiera could see plenty of Teekay’s body to get a good read on what ze was feeling, and anything ze said would get translated into Kiera’s earpieces. 

So she felt along the opening, getting her fingers around one of the nubs at the opening. They were spongy to the touch, and she swirled the juices around them. That got little response, so she curled her fingers just inside the opening, where she thought that a little bit of a glow heralded the next egg waiting inside. Compared to Teekay, the eggs were quite small, really, and unless they were made of very dense materials, Kiera would probably be able to lift one. Or at least not be crushed by one if it fell on her from the height of a meter or so. 

“Toward the corners, maybe?” Teekay suggested. “That’s where my phalluses are.”

_ Your what? _ Kiera thought to herself, but she said nothing. She had heard that all Vegrag were the same sex, capable of both producing and fertilizing eggs in the same way snails were. But she hadn’t expected to  _ see _ it up close. 

Still, she tucked one hand into the corner of the horizontal opening, feeling along inside until she ran into something that squirmed at her touch--and then  _ grasped back. _ She suppressed her own startle response, and then the way she wanted to laugh at the idea that she was  _ shaking hands _ with Teekay’s genitals right now. Whatever was grasping her right now was strong, with a firm grip that at least wasn’t painful. As it finished wrapping completely around her hand, a little shiver went through Teekay.

“Oh,” ze said, and Kiera saw a smattering of vermilion go down zir sides. It wasn’t a color Kiera had ever seen on Teekay this way before. Red colors showed up sometimes in the patterns of zir words, but never on the emotional stripes. “That’s lovely. Your limb is so  _ hard.” _

Something else wrapped around her forearm, rubbing itself back and forth over the knob of bone on the outside of her wrist, while the first one twisted over her knuckles. Another shiver went through Teekay. More bright red blotches appeared. Kiera herself felt hot under her suit. Sweat broke out on the back of her neck. 

She had no idea if Vegrag experienced things as erotic or sexy in the ways humans did. While this was obviously sexual in nature, given that it very directly had to do with reproduction, for all she knew Teekay experienced this as no different from a visit to the doctor. But as arousal bloomed between her own legs, Kiera  _ wanted _ to believe Teekay felt something like she did.

“Would you like my other hand too?” she offered, and the words came out shaky this time. 

Teekay’s back end shifted, tail moving into a stiff curve that Kiera had learned to interpret as  _ interested _ . 

“Yes please.”

So Kiera slipped her other arm into the opening. Another pair of clasping shapes greeted her there. One of them slipped its tip into the grasp of her hand, while the other curved around her wrist again. 

This time a massive shudder went through Teekay. Almost as soon as Kiera’s second hand was in place, the muscular opening relaxed and the bright shape of the next egg crested. From this close, it was so bright that Kiera had to squint against it. It was like looking directly at an amber-colored lightbulb. She looked anyway, fascinated, as a ripple went up Teekay’s immense spine and the egg gushed forth against her chest. 

It was soft, almost pillowy. For a moment she tried to catch it with her elbows, worried it would get damaged by falling into her lap, but then she remembered that Teekay was going to destroy it anyway. For a moment it nestled up against her breasts, and then she shifted to give it a little more room and it slipped down to plop onto the tops of her feet. 

Teekay sank zir claws into it, shredding its surface and shoving it aside. 

“How are you doing?” Kiera asked. She was wet now too. The low, pleasurable heat of arousal had fully settled between her legs. But this wasn’t really about her, was it? 

“All the sudden the operas make a lot more sense,” Teekay said. “All that stuff about twining necks and grasping one another close.”

Kiera laughed. She’d had a similar experience at the age of fourteen. She’d gotten ahold of adult materials on the ‘web long before she’d ever figured out how to have an orgasm herself. When she’d finally figured out that squeezing something soft between her legs worked better than touching herself directly, all the descriptions of paroxysms and ecstasies had seemed less ridiculous. 

“I’m not big enough to twine necks, sorry,” she said, not really apologetic. Hopefully that would translate. 

“Another Vegrag’s phalluses wouldn’t be hard like your hands are,” Teekay’s translator said. And while the actual language of the translators were often imperfect, Kiera had to give its designers credit for their programming of tone: the translated voice actually sounded kind of sexy right now, the words slow and almost sultry. 

Another ripple went through Teekay then as though to emphasize zir point. A second egg slotted into place between Kiera’s wrists, crested, and then slid down her torso. 

She was so overheated now that she couldn’t help but imagine trying to rub off against one of those eggs. It’d be soft like the stuffed toys and pillows she’d used over the years. And wouldn’t it be magnificent to have an orgasm with something shining and beautiful like this?

Teekay slashed open this third egg, cutting into it all the way to the deep central core. 

Zir massive head lowered, and the arch of zir neck made Kiera feel like she was standing in a tall, warm doorway and holding onto the frame. 

“Do you mind if I have my face closer to you?” Teekay asked then. “It feels a little strange to be so far away from you. As if you were just a toy.”

Given that she was approximately the size of a dildo to a Vegrag, Kiera supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised by this. She laughed again. But her face flushed too. 

“Yeah, come on down here,” she said gently, moved by the request. 

Teekay’s head was larger than most of Kiera’s whole body. Ze lowered it so that the four front-facing eyes, each of them the size of a grapefruit, looked directly at Kiera. 

If she hadn’t felt self-conscious before, she definitely did now. She was aware that Teekay was always scrutinizing her because Vegrag were a visual species first and foremost. But being stared at like this when she was up to her elbows in Teekay’s genitals was a lot to handle. 

“Hi,” she said inanely, and then leaned a little of her weight on the grip Teekay had on her arms. A jumble of colors and patterns went over Teekay’s skin, more red pouring into zir sides, and another ripple went through zir. By the time the translator kicked in with a comically understated, “Oh, oh  _ wow _ ,” two more eggs had slid down Kiera’s breasts and belly and thighs. 

“You feel amazing,” Teekay’s translator said after a pause, and managed to communicate a kind of wonder that Kiera really hoped was accurate because it was so flattering. 

From there, things proceeded more quickly. She tugged and twisted, opalescent juices pouring up her arms and over the shoulders and neck and belly of her suit, and the eggs seemed to come with perfect ease. Every trace of that awful blue-black misery faded out of Teekay’s sides, leaving bright red splotched with pale green relief. The rest of zir skin rippled through colors in the bubbling, almost meditative way it did when Teekay was wordless or thinking deeply. 

Finally, when a total of fifteen eggs lay scattered in various states of destruction on the floor, a final shudder went through Teekay. With a last outpouring which left Kiera’s thighs and even back glittering and prismatic, Teekay unclasped from Kiera’s hands. 

“That’s all of them. Finally,” Teekay told her. 

Kiera nodded. She withdrew cautiously, looking over at Teekay’s great face for reassurance that they were done now and she should stop, and Teekay nodded back at her--a human affectation ze had quickly picked up during their time together. Once her hands were out, the slit sealed itself up to its normal unobtrusive state. She wondered if there were more fluids which would leak out during the day, or if she might need to offer help again later to help evacuate anything left over. 

As she shifted her weight and became more aware of her own body, however, she realized several things. One, that her legs and arms were shaking and tired. Two, that she was so turned on that she wanted something to rub off on  _ immediately. _ Three, that Teekay might be amenable if she did. 

She looked into those four big eyes, which looked back at her all soft and half-lidded, and felt herself blush. 

“If I were to, uh,” she started to say, and then stumbled over her words. She didn’t want to accidentally phrase this in some way the translator would struggle with, but nor did she just want to use the word ‘masturbate,’ which felt too clinical to her. “If I were to give myself an orgasm right now, would that be okay with you?”

Behind Teekay’s head, she saw the little translator screen light up with a series of colors on the little image of a Vegrag’s body. She realized belatedly that there might be no equivalent word to ‘orgasm’ in the Vegrag language; the spasms Teekay had seemed to experience once ze had gotten going had seemed similar, but maybe they weren’t. 

Once the translator had finished, however, Teekay’s eyes went wide and zir sides lit up an anxious yellow again. Zir back and sides flashed words at once. “Oh no, did I trigger a breeding cycle in you too?” Teekay’s translator asked a moment later. 

Kiera held up her hands, waving this away and hoping Teekay would understand. 

“No, no, uh--” How could she explain this? “Human reproduction works very differently. I do produce eggs in my own reproductive cycles, yes, but there are many ways people use their genitals that are just for pleasure rather than reproduction. Seeing someone else enjoying themselves sexually--which you seemed to be, at least?--makes me want to, uh. Stimulate myself that way, too.”

Several jittery moments passed in which she watched the translator screen flash for Teekay’s hind-facing eyes. Then Teekay nodded, fuchsia blooming in spots along zir sides. 

“So you found this inspiring and enjoyable?” Teekay asked, perking up. Zir legs and body shifted, rolling into a different position. “I was worried it was a chore for you.”

Kiera’s face burned hotter still. “No, no, it was...well. If you were human, I’d offer to fuck you again. But you’re not, so.”

More fuchsia appeared at this.  _ Intrigued,  _ Kiera realized; that color meant Teekay was intrigued. 

“Vegrag do something similar,” Teekay confessed. “It doesn’t feel like this did when it’s not about eggs, but we can evert our phalluses and clasp them together even when no one has a clutch that can even be fertilized, much less laid.” Splotches of orange embarrassment came up on zir sides again. “It’s considered very romantic, though. Maybe that’s not what you want.”

At this rate, Kiera’s face was going to catch fire. She’d never felt this overheated in her suit before. It was temperature-controlled, after all.

“I wouldn’t mind,” she confessed before she could stop herself. “I mean--we’re colleagues, we’re not supposed to be doing any of this, are we?”

When that went through, Kiera knew Teekay and zir body language and colors well enough by now to see that ze was puzzled. “Why aren’t we supposed to? We’re  _ comrades _ .”

This wasn’t the conversation she wanted to have when her bits were throbbing-hot and all she wanted was to get off, but this whole affair on Belvedere-5 had gone tits-up from the start, so really she shouldn’t have been surprised. 

“Among humans, it’s considered inappropriate to have sex or fall in love with people you work with,” she said carefully. “It does still happen, but you’re not supposed to.”

“That doesn’t make sense to me,” Teekay said in return. “Who would it be better to fall in love with than those you spend your time with, with whom you share interests and experiences?”

She had no argument for this. But it raised another concern. 

“Sex isn’t always about love or romance for humans,” she admitted with some reluctance. “And you and I...well, we’re on this dig site together alone for an uncertain length of time, but what if my team gets approved? What if one or both of us get pulled out due to a problem in negotiations? I want to have an orgasm right now, but I don’t want to lead you on into believing this is something we might not have any ability to...to undertake together,” she finished, now feeling both awkward and sad. She hadn’t even let herself think about it till now, because the possibility had seemed so inaccessible as to be ridiculous. But now Teekay had brought up the idea of romance, and, well...ze had a point. Who better to fall in love with than someone with whom she liked spending time and had shared interests? And Teekay was so charming that most of the time Kiera forgot to have her guard up even around a massive Vegrag.

But Teekay’s eyes only softened again, falling into a syncopated slow-blink between the four of them. Blink-blink, blink-blink. 

“That is why romance takes years between Vegrag,” ze responded. “Historically-speaking we are a species of warriors. You fall in love over time on the battlefield, and when you’re pulled from active duty to breed, you get serious together then. But in this case, it’s a dig site rather than a battlefield, I’ve already had the eggs, and there won’t be any hatchlings.” Those four massive eyes regarded her. “This is a big site, Kiera. We will both be spending a long, long time working here. We have time to see what happens.”

There had been a few moments in her life Kiera had felt as simultaneously embarrassed, excited, and overwhelmed as this. The time her first girlfriend had proposed came to mind. They hadn’t ended up getting married, but it had been a good experience nonetheless. Why couldn’t this be the same?

“Okay,” Kiera agreed. “Okay. Well...” she hovered one hand over her own pubic mound. She still felt uncomfortable just grabbing herself through her suit, and maybe it would be some vile faux-pas to grab a ruined egg and rut on it. 

While she agonized over how to proceed, Teekay preempted her. 

“How do humans like to touch each other?” ze asked. “Obviously I’m not a human, but maybe I could do something. You made me feel so nice.”

“Well--uh, in sexual situations, I like pressure between my legs.”

“There are lots of parts of me that could give you pressure. You might have to do some of the work, though, until I get a sense of how much pressure counts as enough for you.”

She beckoned Teekay’s face down, then grasped one of the long, flowing tendrils. It was a good meter or more in length and the thickness of her bicep. From this close, she could see all the little textures in the irises of Teekay’s eyes. The horizontal pupils had initially read to her as sleepy, but they didn’t anymore. She was too used to them. 

“Like this,” she said, and guided the tendril down between her thighs. Teekay curled it gently up around one of her buttocks and she pulled it tight against her mound. 

The texture of it under her gloves was exactly what she’d hoped. It was soft, spongy, but the muscles inside it gave it shape and weight. Like a very long tongue, but without being sticky or wet. She cupped one hand underneath it, holding it in place as she started to rock her hips. 

She began slow and exploratory. This was new to both of them, and she had no idea how sensitive those tendrils were. She didn’t want to hurt Teekay. 

Teekay’s colors shifted. “You’re so warm,” Teekay’s translator said a moment later. “I’ve always known that, my lower eyes see in heat rather than in color, but it’s different to feel it.”

She had known that Teekay could see heat, but that (like so many other things about the Vegrag species) had also been purely theoretical until just now. The idea that Teekay might be able to  _ see _ her arousal via the increased bloodflow and heat between her legs only made her feel more overheated still.

So she started to rock. 

The pleasure was a slow build, and she had to readjust the tendril several times before she got it exactly where she wanted it, but that was just sex as usual for her. The sensation grew slow and sweet, spreading through her like the seeping of honey. She looked at Teekay’s tremendous face, regarding her steadily and with interest, and she came with a smile. 

A little shakily she shuffled her feet apart, releasing the tendril and patting it with satisfaction. 

“That’s me done too,” she informed Teekay, who probably wasn’t certain how to tell she’d finished. “Thank you. That was lovely.”

“What’s it like for you?” Teekay asked, clearly curious.

She tried to describe human arousal and orgasm as they made their way back to camp together, and Teekay in return tried to describe the difference between zir experience of egg-laying and zir normal experiences. 

**

The rest of the day, Kiera expected things to get awkward. She expected Teekay to behave strangely, as so many humans had once she’d slept with them. But Teekay didn’t. As far as Kiera could tell, Teekay behaved exactly like normal, except for every once in a while having to get up and leave their work site to wipe at zir genital opening. Given the damp state of her own undergarments, Kiera could relate. 

That evening, after work was done, Teekay had more questions about human sexuality, courtship, and romance. 

Kiera expected that to get awkward too. Her palms and armpits got sweaty with anxiety, and it was like all the worst moments of dating. What if she gave some answer Teekay didn’t like? 

When she finally said this, however, that she was afraid to answer these questions for fear of upsetting Teekay or revealing herself unsuitable in some way, Teekay looked startled. 

“But this is so soon,” Teekay answered. “This is the  _ beginning _ of our assignment, not the end. How would either of us know anything for certain yet? We know a little bit about how we  _ work _ together, but I haven’t seen you in very many circumstances at all so far. Nor you me.”

This brought Kiera up short. They’d been here weeks and weeks now. Among many humans, she realized, this would have been considered more than long enough to know for certain what they wanted between them. 

But Teekay also had a point. Teekay had never seen her among and around other humans. Ze had never met Kiera’s family or seen her interact with them. She had never met Teekay’s family either, or seen zir interact with other Vegrag. Ze had only once seen Kiera in a sexual situation, and as today had demonstrated, knew little about how humans related to one another in this way. Ze had never seen Kiera grieving, or celebrating, or sick. 

“That’s true,” Kiera admitted after a long pause. “I guess I’m used to how humans work, which is different.” Another thought occurred to her then. “What happens when--if--people find out we’re...I don’t know. Interested?”

A flush of amusement went down Teekay’s sides at this. “Oh, I’ll tell my superior officer right away. Tonight, probably, when you’re asleep. Not about the eggs, of course, but about having sex with you. It will be considered a diplomatic coup, and will put me in better stead with my peers than anything else I’ve ever done.”

She stared wide-eyed and incredulous at Teekaay. 

“Seriously? I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

Settling into a different position, Teekay lowered zir face down to Kiera. 

“The only thing most Vegrag like half as much as war is romance,” Teekay said simply. “Especially romance in the face of adversity. Which our difference of species counts as being. Have you never seen any of the V-operas about Vegrag falling in love with other species?”

Kiera made a face. She had read the summaries of some of them; they had struck her as creepy and she had skipped them in favor of the more mainstream ones instead. The romances of that type which she had seen often involved Vegrag military officers falling in love with members of conquered species. 

“The ones I saw described seemed...questionable,” she said carefully. 

“Oh right. You wouldn’t have seen the  _ real _ ones. The propaganda bureau doesn't allow them off homeworld. I’ll see if I can get access to some; since my superior officer will soon know about us, I might be able to get special dispensation.”

“If...” she wasn’t sure how to phrase her question without being insensitive. Teekay waited in patient silence. “If romance is such a beloved ideal, then why don’t they allow all the romantic stories offworld? I’d think they’d  _ want _ to publicize those.”

“The real romances are often very critical of the military and expansionism,” Teekay answered simply. “That’s why they’re not allowed wide distribution, and it took some very pointed lawsuits to allow them to be publicized even on the homeworlds. Many of the operas talk about how the enemy of love is war. That goes against all the other propaganda, and censors don’t want it known outside the Empire that there’s dissension.”

Kiera nodded. That made sense.

“What about you?” Teekay asked then. “Will you get in trouble for this, since humans aren’t supposed to sleep with colleagues?”

The question made her anxious. Tentatively, she laid one hand on Teekay’s big face. A little flush of purple contentment went down Teekay’s sides. 

“I don’t know how my embassy will take it. But given that yours will see it as a positive, I don’t imagine they’ll be upset. Or at least, not in any way they can publicize. Anything that improves relations with the United Empire will make them happy too.”

“Good. So do humans really just decide to be with each other so quickly? I’d seen movies about it, but I thought they were just propaganda or ridiculous fiction. How do humans who do that know anything will work out?”

With a smile, Kiera tried to describe it to Teekay, who listened with rapt attention. And it was just...easy.

A week passed, then two, and things settled into a new normal, and they  _ stayed _ bizarrely easy. 

Teekay was, it turned out, more than happy to get Kiera off when she asked, even if Teekay zirself was not ready to receive sex again. Too much of a sign of commitment, ze said, and since ze was no longer in any state of urgency in laying a clutch, it could wait. 

So Kiera started asking for sex sometimes. Their options were limited by the need for her suit, but sex wasn’t impossible. 

To Kiera, it was the cherry on the already delicious sundae of getting to work on one of the most incredible archaeological sites of the last century. 

When the Federation finally got permission for the rest of her team to come down too, she’d have awkward conversations ahead of her. But that wouldn’t kill her, and in the meantime, she had the attention of what had to be one of the sweetest Vegrag ever. 


End file.
